AXPONA: Sweet Vinyl Sugar Cube!

[amirm]

No, you read that right. Sweet Vinyl is the name of the company and the yet to be released product is called Sugar Cube.

This is a analog to digital and digital to analog converter with a DSP in the middle that is programmed to find and remove LP clicks and pops.

They had a phone app that would let you hear the original, the original without pops and click and most importantly, just the pop and glitches it had removed! The latter was super cool because you could listen to it at elevated levels to see if there was any music in it. I did that and with my ear in front of the speaker I could hear the the full music playing. No, that didn't mean it was broken. They were using an analog mixer and the source was bleeding into it.

As far as I could tell, it was achieving full transparency. AB switches between raw and processed showed no difference.

The device is also a turnkey ripping platform for LPs. Plug in a thumb drive, hard disk or network share and it will rip the LP to the it with full metadata! They created the metadata themselves so that it is LP specific. It needed two tracks to detect the LP.

The device ships around summer and retails for $2,000. Given that it is a DAC/ADC just the same, I think it is a very nice product.

Reaction from LP fans though was amazing to me. The one guy was shocked that anyone would want to remove the pops and clicks. "It is not LP anymore!" The what??? Pops and Clicks are what remind of you a live performance?

I was at another booth of a major Japanese company and I suggested they should OEM this product and sell it under their name. Again, the person was shocked at the suggestion of someone wanting to remove pops and clicks from an LP. Call me lost .

 

[RayDunzl]

Desecrating the individuality of each LP, how dare they.

 

[tomelex]

Uhm, its ok for the signal that is put on the disc to go through a cutter head with like 30 or more db feedback, and then through your own chosen cartridge that "sounds good" to you, but put another device in the chain, that would contaminate the signal! Audiophiles have been conditioned to want so called simplicity and no processors of any kind...its the way it is Amir

 

[TitaniumTroy]

I always remember the ticks and pops on Rush's 2112 album, and hated them. Much happier with the CD version. I saw one demo where the needle got stuck in grove playing the same thing over and over. I forgot albums would do that, ahhhh the good ole day's, but not really.

 

[amirm]

Wasn't that the end of milli vanilli's career?

 

[RayDunzl]

Wasn't that the end of milli vanilli's career?

Wiki:

"After these details emerged, at least 27 different lawsuits were filed under various U.S. consumer fraud protection laws against Pilatus, Morvan and Arista Records."

 

[amirm]

There is quite a story on Wiki including this:

"In order to restore their career, Farian agreed in 1997 to produce a new Milli Vanilli album with Morvan and Pilatus on lead vocals. This all led up to the recording of the 1998 Milli Vanilli comeback album Back and In Attack. Even some of the original studio singers backed the performers in their attempt to bring back some of the fame that had been shed so quickly. However, Rob Pilatus encountered a number of personal problems during the production of the new album. He turned to drugs and crime, committing a series of assaults and robberies [15][citation needed] and was ultimately sentenced to three months in jail and six months in a drug rehabilitation facility in California. Farian bailed Pilatus out of jail and paid for the rehab and plane tickets for him to fly back to Germany.[16][citation needed] On the eve of the new album's promotional tour on 2 April 1998, Pilatus was found dead of a suspected alcohol and prescription drug overdose in a Frankfurt hotel room.[5][17] Pilatus' death was ruled accidental.[18]

Back and In Attack remains unreleased."